Another looong Rhubarb comic, perhaps the longest yet. If it’s any consolation to you while you’re struggling to finish it, it also took a looong time to create.

“If it’s very long, then it’s probably very boring”, you might say knowingly to yourself. At this point, you might also hear a knock at the door. It’s the postman and he’s carrying a package for you. Inside the package is a note with the number 721 scribbled on it. It might be the exact number you thought of in another unrelated situation a couple of days ago, when a guy asked you to think of a random number at a party. In this case, you realize you’ve been part of an awesome mind reading trick. You feel exhilarated with excitement. This is incredible. Even though there’s no music you can’t help dancing. Wilder and wilder, around and around. Finally exhausted you sit down shaking your head laughing. This just might be the best day of your entire life. Perhaps you should even go read that long, boring comic now.

“Splleebabx elull”. Due to what turned out to be an unreasonably busy day, this is all I found time to write to accompany the comic. It doesn’t mean anything. In most other cases I probably wouldn’t have used it.

Pirates are a safe bet, right? Pirates, cutlass’, bandanas and some awesome boat plundering and things automatically start to reek of smash hit. Pirates are for pop culture of the sea, what zombies are for the mainland. See also pop culture of the air: flaming seagulls of wrath, and pop culture of the forest: That guy Tom Cruise plays in Legend. You can’t go wrong with pirates. Still, you can’t say I didn’t make a darn good try.

“Mieville moves effortlessly into the first division of those who use the tools and weapons of the fantastic to define and create the fiction of the coming century”.

Neil Gaiman wrote this little endorsement on China Mievilles “Perdido Street Station” (which I’m currently reading). My hopes for this little supplemental text piece was initially to have Neil write something similar on “Anyone for Rhubarb?”. I could even have made do with a subtle change of certain words – Mieville for Christian Henry and the tools and weapons of the fantastic for wicked awesomeness for instance. Sadly and for reasons still unknown, one of which was that I made no attempt whatsoever to contact him, it wasn’t to be. Perhaps next week. Neil and I are great friends in my imagination, so it’s probably mostly a matter of time.

If upon reading this comic you think to yourself; this comic is getting stranger and stranger by the week, I feel unsafe, the guy who makes it is clearly some kind of super nut – Shame on you! Yes, I know things aren’t exactly getting any less weird. Heck, I guess this weeks comic isn’t even a gag-comic in any traditional sense, with a proper build-up, a punch line at the end and all that la-di-da fancy stuff. But darn it, I’m not a super nut. That’s so hurtful. Sure I wear a tinfoil hat to stop other comic artists from stealing my ideas, but in my book that merely adds to my normalcy, because it’s such a normal thing for anyone to do.

I’m aware that the last couple of Rhubarbs have taken the comic in a slightly new direction in terms of tone and form, compared to previous installments. It may just happen, that the Rhubarb is growing up and turning out a big awkward teenager with weirdly strong glasses and clothes that don’t really fit. The excellent news is, you got first row tickets for every new pimple, pubic hair and involuntary boner. And I don’t even know exactly what that means metaphorically, that’s how awesome it is!

This comic was made to satisfy the surprisingly large group of readers who feel that the topic of pee have been sorely overlooked here on the Rhubarb. Yes, I know the comic hasn’t exactly been overburdened with pee related content, but I swear it’s purely coincidental. I have nothing personal against pee per se, let’s just get that out of the way once and for all. I’m not particular fond of it either, but I’m not anti-pee. All in all, I feel I have a pretty normal relationship to pee. There isn’t talk of any deliberate disregarding or ban of pee, I just haven’t found myself looking to pee for ideas until today. Nevertheless, I hope this comic makes up for the lack of such material earlier on, and with that out the way, I hope we can all concentrate on the future.

Phew, some comics just put up more of a fight. This one was a wild fellow. I tell you, if this comic could talk, oh the stories of rewrites and silly discarded ideas it would tell. The original joke idea and punchline isn’t even in this version. Someday I’ll make a 30 panel long directors cut-edition and you’ll see.

Speaking of panels, regular readers of the Rhubarb might notice that this comic is a breakaway from the traditional format size wise. You’ll have to do a little more scrolling to get the full Rhubarb experience, but I hope you’re willing to put in the extra effort. I just thought, why this is a web-comic, I don’t have to stick with any one format, I can fit the format to the comic/idea and not the other way around. I’m a freebird that way. Yeeeah! I’m the king of the world!

Anyways, I hope it doesn’t turn out to be the single biggest mistake in my entire life for some unforeseen reason.

Some day this placeholder text will be replaced with some of the deep insights and thoughts behind this comic. There’s gonna be all about how the giants represent fear of commitment and how the knit sweaters symbolize hope in the midst of a global financial crisis. It’s gonna be deep and thought provoking. Even controversial at times. But for now you’ll have to do with this temporary text. I’m sorry.